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FLORIDA ART, PAST & PRESENT

Edited by Amanda Poss, Jennifer Ring and Alicia Ellison With contributions by Amanda Poss and Antonio Permuy

Organized by

CREDITS

This booklet was published in conjunction with the exhibition Flourishing Dichotomies: Florida Art, Past & Present, curated by Amanda Poss and Antonio Permuy at Gallery221@HCC Dale Mabry from August 19 through October 17, 2024. Some of these texts first appeared in the e-newsletter through the HCC Art Galleries membership program and are reprinted here.

Contributing writers: Amanda Poss, Antonio Permuy

Editors: Amanda Poss, Jennifer Ring, Alicia Ellison

Copyediting: Rebecca Nagy, Jennifer Ring, Alicia Ellison

Book Design: Jennifer Ring

Printing: HCC Art Galleries

Program made possible in part by support of Student Activities/Service Fees and the HCC Dale Mabry Campus Student Government Association.

Cover: Virginia Berresford (American, 1902–1995), Florida Shore, c.1935. Oil on canvas, 21 ⅝ x 31 ⅝ inches. The Florida Art Collection, Gift of Samuel H. and Roberta T. Vickers.

CURATORIAL ESSAY

For centuries, Florida has captured the imagination as a land imbued with mystique, diversity and contradictions. Flourishing Dichotomies reveals the eclectic truths and perceptions of Florida’s varied reputations through several themes and subnarratives.

These themes and narratives encompass the range and layers of Floridian experiences embodied within the exhibition title. “Flourishing” links to Florida’s naturalism and the perpetual flourishing in tourism, immigration, real estate and commercial development. “Dichotomies” nods to the many facets of Floridian life—truth vs. myth, tropical paradise vs. urban jungle, “native” Floridian identity vs. outside impact and historic vs. modern architecture.

Through painting and photography, this exhibition pairs work by five contemporary artists with select works from one of the world’s largest collections of Florida Art, the Vickers Collection, on loan from the Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida. Spanning a century of works from the 1920s to the present, Flourishing Dichotomies examines aspects of the state’s unique history, many of which continue to shape the lived experiences of today’s Floridians and places them in an ever-evolving context.

Flourishing Dichotomies captures a palpable sentiment that extends beyond superficial eclecticism or the bizarre and suggests an underlying tension. This exhibition reveals how this underlying tension manifests in the arts as inspiration and innovation with sometimes surprising outcomes. Some pieces reinterpret art styles and application methods while capturing Florida’s scenery. Some artworks evoke the primordial, while others uncover the timeless within modernity’s embrace of the present and future. In tracing the winding thread of these eclectic manifestations, each work in Flourishing Dichotomies captures a central facet of the essence of Florida and reveals deeper truths, both seen and felt, for the viewer to reflect on.

Featured artists: Mathias J. Alten, Frank Beatty, Virginia Berresford, Jenny Carey, Johnny “Hook” Daniels, Edward Clarence Dean, Miguel Fleitas, George Snow Hill, Louis Jambor, Bruce Marsh, Selina Román, Alex Torres, T.W. Wilson and Florence Baran Wise.

ANTONIO PERMUY

Co-Founder at Blackout Art

Communications Director at Permuy Architecture

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

When I first moved to Florida in 2012, my conceptions of the state were filled with visions of endless beaches, alligator-filled swamps, amusement parks and pastel-colored houses. While my early musings regarding the Sunshine State were soon to be partially confirmed, I also discovered that my new home was so much more. It is a diverse, eclectic, eccentric place full of contrasts and contradictions that are as delightful as they are at times ineffable.

Flourishing Dichotomies started with a conversation about Florida itself and what it means to its myriad visitors, residents and onlookers. The exhibition raises questions about collective identity, of being from or coming to a place, history and modernity, the juxtaposition of urban development and nature, as well as the fissions between myth and reality.

I want to thank Rebecca Nagy, Director Emeritus of the Harn Museum of Art, for first bringing to my attention the Vickers Collection and raising the possibility of loaning a portion of the artworks for our community. I also want to thank the staff of the Harn Museum of Art for being such wonderful collaborators, especially their Director, Dr. Lee Anne Chesterfield; Chief Curator and Curator of Modern Art, Dulce Román; Senior Registrar Jessica Uelsmann; and Registrar for Exhibitions and Loans, Liz Rodgers.

I am eternally grateful for my co-curator Antonio Permuy, whose passion and enthusiasm for art was abundant from our first interaction. Our discussions and exchanges were essential in the formation of this exhibition, and his research into the twentieth century artworks adds a rich intellectual and contextual experience to the show.

At Hillsborough Community College, we are incredibly fortunate to have the support of Student Activities, whose generous funding makes it possible to host our exhibitions and programs throughout the year. We are also very grateful to have the support of Dustin Lemke, Dean of the Associates in Arts Degree Programs at the HCC Dale Mabry campus and Dr. Paige Niehaus, HCC Dale Mabry Campus President.

To my gallery team—James Cartwright, Jessi Sherbet, Jen Ring, Piper Harrow, and our devoted group of student workers—I owe tremendous thanks. Their insights and contributions were a vital part of fostering this exhibition from concept to reality.

Finally, my heartfelt gratitude goes to our five contemporary artists in Flourishing Dichotomies: Jenny Carey, Miguel Fleitas, Bruce Marsh, Selina Román and Alex Torres. I am continually impressed by the clarity of their vision, and I am deeply grateful for the ways in which each of them has inspired me to seek out small moments of magic in everyday environments. Thank you for sharing your time and talents with us for this exhibition.

AMANDA POSS

Gallery Director

Hillsborough Community College

SEMINOLES IN CANOE, 1920

Lajos “Louis” Jámbor (Hungarian-American, 1884–1955)

Oil on board | 25 ½ x 19 ½ in. | Lent courtesy of the Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, The Florida Art Collection, Gift of Samuel H. and Roberta T. Vickers.

Lajos “Louis” Jámbor was an accomplished Hungarian-American artist who served as president of both the American Artists Professional League (AAPL) and the Salmagundi Club, as well as Treasurer of the American Watercolor Society. Among his prominent commissions were frescoes at Mar-a-Lago, then Marjorie Merriweather Post’s Palm Beach estate, and an illustrated edition of the popular book Little Women. His work is in the permanent collection of the Zigler Art Museum and the Harn Museum of Art.

Here Jámbor depicts two indigenous Seminole figures in traditional attire rowing in the Everglades. While the term “Seminole” was often used to refer to any Indigenous Floridians, the Seminole people originally migrated from Georgia and Alabama to Florida in the 18th century. They continued to migrate south to evade the United States Armed Forces and were forcibly moved to Oklahoma in the 19th century as part of the Trail of Tears. Between 1816 and 1858 there were three Seminole Wars fought to repel the U.S. government from their lands.

Seminoles are known for having successfully repelled U.S. invasions and defending their lands in the Everglades, and therefore refer to themselves as “unconquered.” In the early 20th century, however, Seminoles began to increasingly work as laborers and in tourism to help them adapt to the decline in their trade and the draining of the Everglades as a result of growing urban development in surrounding areas.

Jámbor executes Seminoles in Canoe in an Impressionist style, using a range of rich blues to evoke a dark, mysterious, and dreamlike ambiance in which elements of pre-European Florida history can still be seen in the early 20th century through the crossroads of culture and nature. Discernible native Cypress trees can be seen emerging from the background—a scene pervaded by ambiguity, such as whether it takes place at dawn or twilight. One might suggest that the Seminoles here row into an uncertain future while remaining connected to their lands.

COCONUT GROVE, 1940

Florence Baran Wise (American, 1881–1956)

Oil on canvas | 17 ¾ x 21 ½ in. | Lent courtesy of the Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, The Florida Art Collection, Gift of Samuel H. and Roberta T.

Vickers.

A rare example of a professional female artist of the early 20th century, Florence Baran Wise was known for her portraits, still lifes, landscapes and illustrations.

Born in Farmingdale, New York, Wise studied at the National Academy of Design and Rhode Island School of Design and was a student of George Bridgman, a classically trained artist who studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris and taught at the Art Student’s League. Bridgman’s other notable students included Norman Rockwell and Emile Gruppe.

Wise’s work was featured in the July 1926 cover of The House Beautiful magazine with a design that received an Honorable Mention in their Third Annual Competition. Wise died in Providence, Rhode Island. She is included in the permanent collection of the Harn Museum of Art.

Coconut Grove depicts a commercial scene within Coconut Grove, the oldest continuously-inhabited neighborhood in Miami. Wise uses warm, saturated and vibrant colors to capture tropical sunshine and includes palm trees to create a sense of place that is recognizably and undeniably Floridian, then as well as now. Figures are seen moving about, suggesting economic activity as the nation emerged from the Great Depression.

Central to the painting is its depiction of architecture. Wise illustrates the Spanish-style Mediterranean Revival architecture that was popular throughout Florida in the early 20th century and hearkens back to Florida’s roots as a former Spanish colony.

Coconut Grove highlights an emerging dichotomy in Florida’s pre-mid century identity: embracing change and growth, while also harkening back to Old World European roots.

LARGE GROVE SCENE, UNDATED

Johnny Lee “Hook” Daniels (American, 1954–2009)

Oil on board | 36 x 47 ½ in. | Lent courtesy of the Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, The Florida Art Collection, Gift of Samuel H. and Roberta T. Vickers.

Johnny Lee “Hook” Daniels was a Florida-born artist and key member of the Florida Highwaymen, a group of traveling African-American artists who showed their work throughout Florida. Active from the 1950s to the 1980s, their works captured Florida landscapes often using inexpensive, nontraditional materials. The group produced thousands of paintings in a roughly thirty-year span.

In a period when African-American artists went unrecognized by the traditional art establishment, the Highwaymen offered rare and recurring exposure to Black artists in Florida from the segregation to post-Civil Rights eras. Barred from most galleries and museums on racial grounds, the Highwaymen traveled the state and sold their work from their trucks, door-to-door and by roadsides, as well as supported one another through art lessons and networking.

Daniels was a key figure in the group, bridging the second generation of Highwaymen to their original first wave of the 1950s and 60s. Having begun painting as a teenager, Daniels was the youngest member of the group and would go on to have an extensive painting career for over 40 years.

Many Florida Highwaymen were originally citrus grove workers who had familiarity with Florida’s varied terrains. Large Grove Scene evokes this background as well as Florida’s long-standing and emblematic association with the citrus industry.

Cementing the group’s trailblazing impact, the 26 original members of the Florida Highwaymen were inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame in 2004. Daniels’ work is included in the Harn Museum of Art and in the personal collection of former United States President Barack Obama.

FLORIDA-THE TROPICAL WONDERLAND, 1948

T. W. Wilson (American)

Oil on canvas | 28 x 34 ¼ in. | Lent courtesy of the Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, The Florida Art Collection, Gift of Samuel H. and Roberta T. Vickers.

Florida - The Tropical Wonderland by T. W. Wilson captures the already firmly established “winter wonderland” reputation Florida has held since the late nineteenth century. That period brought the establishment of Henry Flagler’s railway system, suddenly making the state accessible to wealthy travelers seeking warmth from as far as New York and Chicago. Nearly fifty years later, Florida - The Tropical Wonderland places this messaging within the context of the jubilant post-World War II economic and population boom, and is now directed to America’s growing middle class.

With a clear promotional tone, this image of Florida as an almost mythical “Tropical Wonderland” has pervasively captured the imagination of America. It emerged through the convergence of warm sunny weather, tropical scenery and beaches, and led to a steady and growing stream of tourists to the state through the twentieth century. In the second half of the twentieth century, Florida tourism was further developed beyond the beaches with the addition of the Kennedy Space Center in 1963 and Walt Disney World in 1971, each amplifying the state’s sunny and otherworldly mythology. In 1970, Florida cemented this reputation by officially adopting the nickname “The Sunshine State.”

Alongside growing tourism came several waves of migrants to Florida from other states, notably including seasonal “snowbird” residents, as well as immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean, adding to Florida’s eclectic culture. From northern retirees to young vacationers, this dichotomy of continuous non-local presence now forms a foundational part of the lived Floridian experience in the sun. This broad invitation is reinforced by the imagery of the sun shining over undeveloped land, suggesting the promise of a bright future for new settlers, a subliminal message that would have resonated with real estate developers and investors.

Florida - The Tropical Wonderland shows that the alluring intrigue of the naturalistic “Wonderland” image not only persists, but also continues to be highly impactful. More 75 years later, Wilson’s painting acts as a time capsule, recalling that mid-twentieth-century evolution that has since become an archetypal blueprint of Florida’s reputation, even as urban development has dominated its city centers. This can be seen not only in the enduring and universal appeal of its verbiage today, but also its visual emphasis on sunshine, water and vegetation as well as its use of orange in the typeface, subliminally evoking Florida’s renowned sunsets and famous citrus industry.

FLORIDA SHORE, c. 1935

Virginia Berresford (American, 1902–1995)

Oil on canvas | 21 ⅝ x 31 ⅝ in. | Lent courtesy of the Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, The Florida Art Collection, Gift of Samuel H. and Roberta T. Vickers.

A rare female exhibiting painter of the time, Virginia Berresford was born in New Rochelle, New York in 1902. Berresford was known to be passionate about learning, culture and travel. She was highly educated, having attended Wellesley College, Columbia University and the Art Student’s League, as well as studying in Paris for five years from 1925-1930. While in Paris, Berresford studied privately under Amédée Ozenfant, co-founder of the Purism movement alongside Le Corbusier. Berresford subsequently painted in a Modernist style, as seen in Florida Shore.

In 1927, Berresford held her first solo exhibition while in Paris at the prominent Galleries Bernheim-Jeune, which also showed works by Van Gogh, Matisse and Cézanne. She went on to have a successful professional art career, exhibiting in several of the preeminent art venues of the United States, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. In her later years, Berresford opened an art gallery in Martha’s Vineyard, where she represented herself as well as other artists until her death in 1995.

Berresford first visited Florida in 1934, staying in Key West where she would spend her winters until her divorce in 1950. She also lived in Miami for two years, from 1943 to 1945. In Key West, she painted the sea and palm trees, becoming particularly fascinated by the designs of their fronds. There, Berresford’s painting style loosened as she began working in watercolor and using freer brush strokes and brighter colors that suited her new surroundings.

Florida Shore is painted in Berresford’s unique Modernist style that includes elements of Art Deco, such as its linear and geometric division of land, sea and clouds, its sunburst imagery, sweeping and dramatic aerodynamic curvature, and an overall streamlined simplicity and directness in its subject matter.

Berresford also brings Art Deco to an unusual setting: entirely outdoors, without architecture or people, in direct contrast to Art Deco’s typical emphasis on the modern and industrial. Here, the subject’s emphasis is on the timeless elements of Florida: the beaches and sun.

Through these contrasting dichotomies of nature and Modernism, this Art Deco beach scene reveals an underlying allusion to Florida’s rising popularity as a tourist destination, which will continue to grow through the ensuing century.

WEST PALM SKYLINE, UNDATED

Frank Beatty (American, 1899–1984)

Oil on board | 11 ⅜ x 15 ½ in. | Lent courtesy of the Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, The Florida Art Collection, Gift of Samuel H. and Roberta T. Vickers.

Frank Beatty is known for plein air painting, particularly of landscapes and cityscapes. Primarily based in Chicago, he was part of several art guilds and clubs, and was President of the Palette and Chisel Academy. He exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, Winnipeg Galleries and served as Art Director of the publication Popular Mechanics for twenty years before retiring in 1961.

Through the 1960s, Beatty traveled frequently to paint en plein air at various locations in Europe, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and the United States. In the U.S., Beatty visited several locations in Florida, including Key West, Palm Beach and Jupiter.

Despite its small scale, West Palm Skyline contains substantial visual impact and powerful narrative depth. Here, Beatty merges a landscape with a cityscape to imply his views on Florida’s urban development. The large, bare tree dramatically juxtaposes untamed foliage with an urban background, framing a battle between man and nature. Man is made small while the tree dominates, almost aggressively, as the painting’s central figure and focus. It is not subsumed by the almost ominous rise of towers in the distance, striking an almost defiant stance with its jutting, angular branches.

Through scale and contrast, civilization and urbanism are implied to be invasive to the scene, whereas nature, separated by water, is made into an island, like a remnant of unspoiled paradise. This composition suggests an ironic and dichotomous narrative of modern man erasing the very resplendent scenery that continues to draw people to Florida.

BEACH SCENE, UNDATED

George Snow Hill (1898–1989)

Oil on board | 16 ¾ x 21 ¾ in.| Lent courtesy of the Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, The Florida Art Collection, Gift of Samuel H. and Roberta T. Vickers.

Born in Munising, Michigan, George Snow Hill was a painter and sculptor who resided in St. Petersburg, Florida for much of his professional career. He and his wife, painter Polly Knipp Hill, were students under artist Carl Tracey Hawley and lived in Paris in the 1920s, where they would marry. While in Paris, Hill would also exhibit his work and maintain a studio.

Hill received a fellowship to study in the Académie Colarossi and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris and exhibited in the Salon des Artistes Français from 1923-1929 and in London’s Royal Academy in 1924. He returned to the United States in 1929, living in New York City. Hill then moved to St. Petersburg in 1932, where he founded the Hill School of Art in 1946. He remained in St. Petersburg until his death in 1989.

Hill’s murals have become sources of controversy, such as a bare breast visible in the St. Petersburg Coast Guard Station, a canceled 1934 Clearwater Courthouse commission featuring scantily dressed sunbathers, and charges of derogatory racial depictions in a beach scene that was removed in 1966. Hill’s restored murals depicting the history of flight are featured in the Tampa International Airport.

Beach Scene shows the style Hill was largely known for, centering largely on action scenes. It also features traces of the thematic elements that drew controversy for his public art, and sometimes triggered its removal.

His painting showcases the beach revelry and joyful abandon that had already become emblematic of Florida tourism by the mid-20th century as vacationers and adopted locals like Hill made beaches a social center. Today, Florida remains a national epicenter of Spring Break tourism. Rather than scandalizing, much of the scene’s risqué subject matter remains visible today and has been fully normalized into Floridian culture, forging an enduring image of the Sunshine State: people on the beach while on vacation.

VENETIAN POOL, CORAL GABLES, 1929

Mathias J. Alten (American, 1871–1938)

Oil on canvas | 15 ⅝ x 19 ⅝ in.| Lent courtesy of the Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, The Florida Art Collection, Gift of Samuel H. and Roberta T. Vickers.

Mathias J. Alten was born in Gusenburg, Germany and moved to the United States in 1889, settling with fellow German immigrants in Michigan. Alten created more than 3,000 paintings during his career, including landscapes, seascapes, florals, still lifes and portraits. He painted in the Impressionist style and traveled extensively across the U.S. and Europe.

Alten also visited Hollywood, Florida in 1929, during which time he traveled further south to Coral Gables and produced three known paintings of Venetian Pool, the largest freshwater pool in the United States. He would also visit Tarpon Springs, Florida in 1935.

Venetian Pool shows a major tourist attraction in Florida, in which Alten emphasizes its water, lush tropical scenery, and the presence of an architectural style that was popular in Florida at the time: Mediterranean Revival.

Coral Gables was an early planned community in the United States, designed to evoke European Mediterranean architecture, in this case that of Venice. By its historical, European nature, Mediterranean Revival architecture contrasted with the Modern Art Deco architecture of the day. This illustrates a dichotomy in Florida’s identity, at times reaching to the past while also embracing the modern.

COCONUT GROVE, 1941

Edward Clarence Dean (American, b. 1879)

Oil on canvas | 32 ¼ x 26 ¾ in.| Lent courtesy of the Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, The Florida Art Collection, Gift of Samuel H. and Roberta T. Vickers.

Edward Clarence Dean was born 1879 in Washington D.C. and held three careers as an artist, architect and botanist. He was a close friend of renowned botanist Dr. David Fairchild, who wrote his obituary. He married Hilaire Sooy Smith, daughter of the celebrated civil engineer and Civil War veteran William Sooy Smith, who oversaw the construction of the world’s first large all-steel bridge.

Dean studied mechanical engineering at Yale’s Sheffield Scientific School before transitioning to study architecture at Columbia University. He was a member of the American Institute of Architects, president of the Greenwich Society of Artists and helped start the first residential garden group in New York. Several of Dean’s pieces were hung in Fairchild Tropical Garden’s Montgomery House.

Dean resided in Greenwich, Connecticut, before settling near Matheson Hammock in Coral Gables, Florida, where he named his residence “The Panther Jungle” due to visits by one of the last native panthers in the region.

Like much of his work, Coconut Grove reflects Dean’s passion for horticulture and centers on tropical vegetation. Like Florence Baran Wise’s Coconut Grove, this painting also depicts Miami’s Coconut Grove neighborhood. Though painted one year apart, they reveal radically different facets of the area. Here, Dean captures the area from a naturalistic vantage point. It shows Florida’s dark, mysterious and somewhat dangerous dimension as well as the wilderness that once dominated the state.

Dean evokes the essence of undeveloped Florida, reconnecting the growing Coconut Grove neighborhood to a primordial past before the arrival of Europeans or perhaps even before human contact. In doing so, Dean reminds us that traces of this untamed nature are still present in the urbanized Florida we recognize.

Dean shows us that nature remains on the edges of urban development, as the wilderness of Florida manifests with reports of alligators in residential areas. It reminds us that, despite every effort to tame it and develop it, Florida’s primeval spirit persists.

INTERSECTION w/CLOUDS, 2014

Bruce Marsh (American, b. 1937)

Oil on canvas | 36 x 72 in.| Lent courtesy of the artist.

An established artist who taught for over three decades at the University of South Florida, Bruce Marsh often paints places he has lived and visited. Throughout his career, Marsh’s focus has centered on his interests in perception and intense observation, as he states, “always hoping for magic.” His canvases deftly capture shifting effects of light and atmosphere in both natural and manmade environments. In Intersection w/Clouds, Marsh conveys his impressions of a particular street crossing in Ruskin, Florida, not far from his home. The mundane nature of the urban setting—complete with asphalt, traffic cones, streetlights, cars and buildings—stands in contrast to the dramatic colors, movement and textures of the sky. The resulting tension between the two parts of the composition creates an energetic yet harmonious effect, imparting a sense of place caught between memory and daydream.

DOWNTOWN RUSKIN, 2010

Bruce Marsh (American, b. 1937)

Oil on canvas | 12 x 40 in.| Lent courtesy of the artist.

The majority of Bruce Marsh’s intimately scaled painting Downtown Ruskin is dominated by an empty parking lot. The surfaces of asphalt and concrete are scattered with specks of green as weeds force their way through crevices, untended and wild. The horizon line is dotted with flat, angular planes representative of various industrial buildings, casually interspersed with cars, light poles and palm trees. In the upper half of the composition, a cloudfilled sky is divided in three sections by different shades of blue—the darkest, and perhaps most ominous, occupies the upper right corner, suggesting an oncoming storm. Completed in May of 2010, the painting becomes a kind of document, recording the artist’s perceptions of time and place in a way that feels both specific and universal.

TAKING THE WATERS, 2021

Jenny Carey (American, b. 1954)

Archival pigment print | 34 x 31 in.| Lent courtesy of the artist.

Jenny Carey’s Taking the Waters provides a snapshot of Warm Mineral Springs in Sarasota, Florida. In the image, dozens of visitors swim languidly in bluegreen artesian waters and float on colorful pool noodles, with lush foliage framing the scene from all sides. Taken a year after the COVID-19 outbreak, the photograph includes a swimmer in the foreground wearing a bright red hat and a plastic face covering that captured Carey’s attention during her visit. The title, taken from a popular phrase indicating the cleansing and restorative power of mineral springs, suggests an overall sense of healing and community that many longed for after the global pandemic. However, beneath the pleasant atmosphere and delightfully eclectic scenery, the photograph also imparts a subtle tension between tourism and the longterm preservation of Florida’s iconic natural resources.

SILVER AND BLUE SOLITUDE, 2022

Jenny Carey (American, b. 1954)

Archival pigment print | 34 x 29 in.| Lent courtesy of the artist.

Jenny Carey is a longtime Tampa resident whose photography encompasses themes of memory, loss, and family, often through the use of repetition and ordinary environments. Silver and Blue Solitude captures a quiet beach scene set in Fort DeSoto Park. The image focuses on several thin trees, pressed close into the viewer’s space in the foreground. In the distance, the landscape stretches into horizontal patterns of sand, water and sky interrupted by a lone umbrella and chair on the left of the composition. The natural colors are edited and somewhat muted, creating stronger visual harmony and more dramatic contrasts of texture and light. While the image is evocative of Florida’s iconic beach vistas, Carey’s photograph is perhaps more reminiscent of the aweinspiring drama of 19th century Romanticism, prioritizing an individual and emotional response to the landscape that is rooted in memory.

UNTITLED (BEND), 2011

Selina Román (American, b. 1978)

Archival pigment print | 17 x 22 in.| Lent courtesy of the artist.

Trained as a print journalist, Florida native Selina Román creates photographs that explore concepts of femininity, perception, memory and place. Untitled (Bend) comes from a series of images that present mischievous, faceless figures that inhabit desolate environments. In the foreground, two colorful and splendidly sequined bathers stand knee-deep in Tampa Bay—one bends away, while the other bends towards the viewer, their hands disappearing below the water’s edge. The calm surface of the water mirrors its environment, dreamlike and bright, set against a hazy background with dark industrial buildings and smokestacks. By purposely obscuring the faces of the figures, the artist forces viewers to search the setting for clues that would impart further context, allowing for the possibility of a multitude of meanings.

FRED BALL PARK REFLECTION, 2021

Selina Román (American, b. 1978)

Archival pigment print | 13 x 19 in.| Lent courtesy of the artist.

Fred Ball Park Reflection is part of a larger series by Selina Román called A Bad Batch. The series began in 2020 when she noticed a church parking lot in Tampa, Florida that seemed to be flooded with a mysterious purple light coming from the streetlights. The phenomenon she observed was actually part of a widespread malfunction stemming from a “bad batch” of light bulbs from the manufacturer. For Román, the purple lights transformed mundane settings into something extraordinary. The title of this particular photograph provides viewers with the exact setting: a small public park off of Bayshore Boulevard, named after a local government official. However, the purple light bathes the foreground in a fantastical glow, rendering it distinct and almost otherworldly in contrast to the mundane environment just beyond the palm trees.

THE GOLD COLLECTOR, 2009

Miguel A. Fleitas (Cuban-American, b. 1956)

Photograph on Kodak professional endura metallic paper | 13 x 9 ¼ in.| Lent courtesy of the Antonio Permuy Collection.

Miguel A. Fleitas is a Cuban-born painter and photographer. He is the son of Cuban painter and filmmaker Miguel Fleitas Sr., the founding Director of the Cuban Institute of Arts and Industry Cinematography. Fleitas learned black and white film photography from his father as well as from the prominent Cuban photographer Iván Cañas, which became Fleitas’ trademark aesthetic. Shot in Miami’s Cauley Square Historic Village, The Gold Collector shows the worlds hidden in plain sight using intimate framing and focus techniques. While developing the image, Fleitas discovered that the sparkling reflection of the water gave the appearance of gold, which the statue appeared to be reaching towards. Fleitas uses poetic suggestion through the title to create new mental images for the viewer, adding whimsical elements of fantasy to connect this small pond scene to an implied inner world.

QUIET MOMENTS, 2009

Miguel A. Fleitas (Cuban-American, b. 1956)

Miguel A. Fleitas has held professional careers in painting and photography as well as television media production. His experience in television and film influenced his art through the exploration of mass media’s impact on society, which led him to focus on small, ordinary moments within the fast-paced movement of contemporary life. Quiet Moments was taken in the Cauley Square Historic Village in Miami. While the bananas occupy the focal point of the image, Fleitas explores associations and visual texture by varying camera focus as well as contrast of light and shadow to draw the viewer’s attention. By capturing the scene in black and white, the artist emphasizes qualities of stillness and serenity, which contrasts sharply with the bustling modern metropolitan areas outside of the frame.

Photograph on Kodak professional endura metallic paper | 13 x 9 ¼ in.| Donated to the HCC Permanent Collection from the Antonio Permuy Collection in memory of Marta Permuy.

UNTITLED, 2024

Alex Torres (Cuban-American, b. 1973)

Oil on canvas | 54 x 54 in.| Lent courtesy of the artist.

Alex Torres creates artworks that are meant to evoke a personal narrative rather than represent a specific image. Inspired by the beauty of the natural world, his work is rooted in the exploration of sea, sky and earth—in this case, the inspiration comes from settings the artist encountered in Florida. The surface of the composition is built up in layers, similar to the accumulation of experiences and memories. Through this process, Torres creates a scene that is a composite of multiple places, times, ideas and emotions. By leaving the artwork untitled, the artist allows for viewers to interpret the imagery through the lens of their own experiences and to see their own memories and dreams reflected within the layers.

UNTITLED, 2020

Alex Torres (Cuban-American, b. 1973)

Pastel on paper | 11 x 20 in.| Lent courtesy of the artist.

In this small untitled drawing, a flurry of lines and pools of color coalesce into a dark and ominous landscape. In the lower half of the composition, a blackened body of water stirs beneath an energetic sky created with deep blues and brown hues, while white lines accentuate moving clouds and rippling waves. A horizontal yellow band separates sky from water at the horizon, which seems to vibrate between the two halves of the composition. The restless movement is further accentuated by the drips of paint and asymmetrical borders, which in some areas push into scene and in other instances dissipate into the edges of the paper. Through abstraction, the artist creates a setting that is at once familiar—like an approaching storm off Florida’s coastline—and also unknown, occupying a space seemingly outside of time and place.

UNTITLED, 2023

Alex Torres (Cuban-American, b. 1973)

Pastel on paper | 30 x 30 in.| Lent courtesy of the artist.

Alex Torres’s work is inspired in part by the Hudson River Valley School, a group of mid-19th century American landscape painters including Asher Durand and Thomas Cole that were heavily influenced by Romanticism. However, unlike this group, Torres does not present a representational or overly celebratory view of nature. Instead, the painting is composed of the artist’s unique impressions of multiple landscapes and settings, fused together into a singular image that is heavily stylized, layered and redacted. This deliberate abstraction imparts a clear sense of the artist’s own hand within the scene and suggests a more metaphysical exploration. By rooting the image with the context of individuality and emotion, the painting invites multiple readings depending on the viewer’s own point of view.